Bookmarks

It's been a week today since I got home from the Cape, and it's the first day I feel that I'm back in my own head and body.

Over the years, I've become an adept at organization. I'm an inveterate list maker, a tool I use to think projects through or to gain perspective on a longterm goal. My first impulse, which I follow without fail after completing a large project, is to clean up the mess I've created.

For me, organizing and cleaning are grounding exercises, akin to handsewing or crocheting. They're all hands-on meditations.

For weeks, I've had two soundtracks running in my heart and head, one dedicated to my family and work, the other to my Mom. At times, one amped up to overpower the other but they've both been there for months. I've been distracted at the best of times, indecisive, uncertain, trying to balance the various parts of my life and finding it more and more difficult as the summer wore on. By August, my whole attention was focused on Mom. Nothing and no one mattered as much as she did, and I just had to hope that the people in my life understood that. With one exception, they did.

Now back home in my own space with my husband and son and dog and cat and woods and river and house and all the other details of my personal life, I've been making lists, thinking, cleaning, organizing.

I have a collection of bookmarks, part of which you can see here, that consists of cards handmade by friends, pieces of my own drawings, mementos of other times and other places. I realized last night as I finally got to sit in my quilting studio for the first time in weeks that I've spent the last week putting the bookmarks of my life back in their places.

Jay just shakes his head when he catches me selecting just the right bookmark for whatever new text takes its place on the top of my reading pile. When you think about it, any old piece of paper would do if all you want is something to slide between two pages. But he recognizes that each of these pieces is attached to a memory, marking a point or recalling a person in my life. They are signposts on my personal journey.

Putting them in their rightful places among the pages of my life knits my past and present together so that I can feel my feet solidly on the ground as I stride off into my tomorrows.